


His Skin Was Made of Damsons (Redevenir)

by SilverMyfanwy



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asexual Bucky Barnes, Asexual Character, Asexual Natasha Romanov, Assets & Handlers, Avengers Family, Avengers Tower, Birthday, Bisexual Bucky Barnes, Books, Bucky Barnes and the 21st Century, Cake, Captain America: The First Avenger, Cats, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Feelings Realization, First Dates, Fluff, Food, Getting Back Together, Getting Together, Grief/Mourning, Grocery Shopping, Hospitals, Implied/Referenced Sex, Knitting, M/M, Moving In Together, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Painting, Polyamory, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Service Dogs, Sharing Clothes, Sharing a Bed, Shooting, Stabbing, Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier, Subways, Tumblr, Writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:08:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22647682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverMyfanwy/pseuds/SilverMyfanwy
Summary: Bucky put his phone back on the bedside table and got up to go and find some breakfast. He entered the kitchen and then heard a clatter from behind him. “Alpine, what’ve you do—”He turned around and saw Steve Rogers standing by an open window with long hair, a bloody face and combat gear caked in mud.There were straps and pockets and hooks all over his clothes; a gun strapped to his back beneath a shield with a red skull on it. His fists were clenching and unclenching, nostrils flaring with air his eyes looked too  scared to take in, body six-foot-something and built like a truck, but in Bucky’s eyes he was the smallest he’d ever been. “I know you.” Steve said in a whisper.-Steve fell from the train, Bucky crashed the plane. And somewhere, in amongst all of it, is Natasha.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 95
Kudos: 214
Collections: Marvel Trumps Hate 2019





	1. Freedom? Freedom. Freedom!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ZepysGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZepysGirl/gifts).



> SO.  
> MTH 2019 fic two. For ZepysGirl, who has been amazing through this whole process; thank you so much for letting me write this fic! It was supposed to have been a 2k oneshot; 15k and 8 chapters later....
> 
> See end notes for chapter warnings.  
> All chapter titles are from Freedom by Pharrell Williams.

Bucky Barnes had been expecting to see Steve Rogers die since he was thirteen years old.

He was thirteen when he first saw the priest perform last rites for Steve over a fever that refused to break. Steve survived, but not by much more than a scraped knee’s-worth of luck and an apple crate full of stubbornness. When he was fifteen, it was pneumonia; at sixteen scarlet fever and seventeen brought flu. When Steve was nineteen, he’d got so close to Death’s door Bucky didn’t think the priest was going to get there in time so he said the last rites himself.

When Bucky got drafted, he cried because he knew he wasn’t going to be there to hold Steve’s hand at the end, like he’d promised him one frozen night under sheets too thin.

He’d expected Steve to die from one of a hundred different ways, from his heart or his family history or a sickness that wouldn’t leave.

He had not expected Steve to die by falling from a train in the Alps in a body that finally wasn’t going to let up on him.

“STEVE!” he watched, frozen to the very centre of his being, as Steve got smaller and smaller and the train rushed onwards. “STEVE!” he clung to the side of the carriage and wept.

-

In less than a week, Bucky found himself falling too.

“I’m real sorry to do this to you, Peggy.” he said. He wasn’t that sorry. His world had ended when he hadn’t been allowed to lead a recovery mission for Steve’s body. The war was over for him and he was fighting because what else did he have to do? He had nothing to live for, nothing to die for— though he seemed to be doing that anyway— and no home to return to.

But Steve had died because of this war, so Bucky damn well wasn’t going to let Steve’s home die for it too.

“I don’t think you’re that sorry.” Peggy said softly. “I’ll make sure they don’t make the statue of Steve too ridiculous.”

Bucky chuckled. “Thanks. Hey, uh, do one thing for me?”

“We’ll find you a safe landing place, Barnes, just let me get Howard—”

“No. There’s no time.” Buck said shakily. “Forget Stark. Just— just get Father Bailey to say mass for Steve, would you?”

Peggy was quiet for a brief moment. “Is that what Steve wanted?”

“Yeah. And, uh, win the war? He’d have wanted that, too.”

“I think he did want that, Sergeant Barnes.”

Bucky took a deep breath to try and steel his nerves as the ocean got closer and closer. “See ya, Peggy.”

“Barnes? Barnes? Bucky? Can you hear me? Sergeant Barnes, are you there?”

-

Bucky was pretty sure he’d made it to heaven because there was no way hell would have beds this soft. Then he heard the sound of the radio and started wondering if he was in purgatory, because the bed was too soft for hell but the quality of the noise from the radio was too poor for heaven. He sat up, rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and watched as a young woman walked into the room.

Bucky bit his tongue. “This isn’t an afterlife, is it?”

The woman hadn’t been expecting that. “Uh, no.”

“Where am I, then?”

“The 21st century.”

That was the moment when Bucky noticed one of his arms was missing. “What the f—”

-

It took a week for Bucky to feel like he had a rough grasp of what was going on and what was being asked of him.

“So I crashed, you won the war, the world still needs saving because various parts of it have been screwed up, America still doesn’t like sick kids and not only is America irritating other countries, it has now also irritated _aliens_ , which are _real_ , and you want me to be Captain America. And we have no idea how I survived.” Bucky surmised, looking at the poor intern, who had been assigned the role of explaining about seventy years’-worth of history and technology to him twelve times over, for conformation.

“Pretty much.”

Bucky sighed and rested his head on his new metal hand, courtesy of Howard Stark’s son. “This is insane.” he pauses. “Tell Fury I’ll do it.”

The intern’s eyes went wide. “Seriously? For real?”

Bucky nodded.

“Thank you so much.” the intern said, face covered in gratitude. “I was so worried I was gonna have to tell Mr Fury you weren’t gonna do it.”

-

"So you're the new guy, huh?" a woman with red hair cut close around her ears asked him on a rubble-covered street, out of breath and grinning. "Any good at fighting aliens?"

"Pretty good at fighting Nazis. Aliens can't be much worse."

The woman threw him a gun. "Natasha Romanov. Nice to meet you."

-

Bucky had no idea what he would have done without the Avengers. Clint, who broke the news to him about the Dodgers and introduced him to pizza; Bruce, who explained modern understandings of medicine and science; Thor, who was even more of a foreigner to New York than Bucky felt and made him feel less alone in this crazy new world; Tony, who gave him food, clothes, a floor in the Tower and everything he could possibly need _except_ the flying car his dad had promised would have been ready an awful long time ago.

Then there was Natasha.

She handed him a laptop and showed him how to use it, then promptly vanished either to Bangkok or Bhutan for a month and a half with a swish of her freshly dyed hair.

Bucky fell in love with the internet—and the Tumblr account Natasha had made him—pretty quickly.

Cat videos were his favourite.

Clint felt it was slightly more important he learnt about the dirtier sides of the internet, but, after opening the first link, Bucky decided that sex in the 21st century was just as weird and gross as it had been in the 20th.

The best thing about the internet was that it allowed Bucky to ask the sorts of questions he wouldn’t dare ask in real life. Unfortunately, in real life, Bucky had a job that could need him at any time. (He’d tried to regulate working hours with Fury but apparently there were no superhero unions which could help him out. He was going to get Tony’s girlfriend to give him some advice.) Just as he typed the words “why is sex gross”’ into Ecosia (because humanity had turned the incompetence levels up so high that in less than a century they’d managed to actually set large parts of the planet on fire, so now trees had to be planted to try and save them all), the alert that meant he had to go Avenging went off.

He groaned and went to get his tac gear on.

-

Three hours later, just as Bucky was walking back into his room covered with ash and mascara, Thor waltzed in looking fresh as a daisy.

"Brother! You look tremendous, would you like to come on a quest to the cinema with me?"

"Where were you an hour ago?" Bucky demanded. "There was a crocodile thing, we needed you!"

-

After half an hour of explaining to Thor that cinemas had been around since before Bucky was born, he finally got a chance to ask the internet his question. After three articles, a video and a Tumblr ask, Bucky found himself staring at a picture of a flag on a Wikipedia article.

Bucky breathed a sigh of relief.

It wasn’t just him.

-

Natasha came back from her mission with long blonde hair and a graze across her cheek.

“How was Bangkok?”

“Bahrain, actually. Messy. Got a knuckleduster, though.” Natasha leaned passed Bucky, who had his back against the kitchen counter, to grab a mug. “Been enjoying Tumblr?”

Bucky nodded. “Lots of flags.”

Natasha continued to make her coffee. “Got a favourite?”

Bucky hesitated. “I like the ace one.”

The warmest smile Bucky had ever seen Nat wear spread across her face. “Me too.”

-

Sometimes there were questions Bucky didn’t want to ask the internet.

He found Nat in her favourite spot at the gym: sitting on top of a tyre and reading a book with a dragon on the front. She was locked into her own little world, her face making tiny movements as the story progressed, legs neatly crossed and her hair half up in a bun. She caught sight of Bucky and smiled. “Hey.”

“Can I ask you a question?” Bucky asked tentatively.

Natasha nodded.

“Is going on dates still a thing?”

Natasha nodded and put her book down. “Can I take you on a date? Bookshop and coffee?”

Bucky smiled. “I’d love that.”

-

Natasha kept her promise and the next day they went to a bookshop, a café and then a park where they watched ducks and went from linked arms to holding hands. After the park there was another café that had green pistachio cake covered in chocolate and then they returned to the Tower and began to watch a documentary about the sea. They sat on the sofa, tucked into a corner with Natasha leaning on Bucky’s side, her arms wrapped around him and their legs tangled together.

Natasha laid her cheek on Bucky’s metal shoulder and he could feel her smile. “Bucky Barnes?”

“Yeah?”

“I think I’d like to go on another date with you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suspected character death (but no actual death)  
> Mentions of illness  
> Mentions of last rites  
> Mention of sex  
> Reference to porn  
> Mention of a plane crash
> 
> Let me know if I missed anything!
> 
> Come say hi on tumblr! silvermyfanwy


	2. Man's red flower/It's in every living thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for warnings.

Natasha took Bucky on their second date the next day.

“Where are we going?” Bucky asked quietly as they stood hand in hand on a crowded subway train.

Natasha was wearing an enormous winter coat which made her seem shorter than she actually was. She looked up at him and smiled. “Wait and see.”

It started snowing as they walked out of the station and through busy streets. Natasha pulled her hood up, then took it down again and started to take her coat off.

“What are you doing?” Bucky asked.

“You look cold.” Natasha said simply. “And you haven’t got a coat. So you can wear mine.”

“But then you’ll get cold!” Bucky protested.

“I’m Russian. This barely counts as cold.” Natasha assured Bucky, then held her coat out to him.

Bucky smiled shyly. “Thank you.”

“Have you ever been to a knitting shop?” Natasha asked Bucky.

“I don’t think so.”

“I think you’ll like it.” Nat said.

Bucky shouldn't have liked the knitting shop. The mess was irritating, the old lady who ran it kept giving him strange looks and the wool made him sneeze. Except: Nat's eyes lit up when she walked in and the bell over the door jingled. She ran her eyes over the colours, fingers over the yarn and pointed out to Bucky the patterns she was planning on making. She left the shop with a hank of blue alpaca wool the colour of Steve's eyes— why that stung Bucky the way it did he didn't know— and a spring in her step. For that, Bucky loved it.

-

“Can I spend the night with you?” Bucky whispered.

They were lying on the floor behind Natasha’s sofa under a blanket, arms wrapped around each other and Nat’s chin resting on top of Bucky’s head.

“Of course you can, lapushka.” Natasha murmured. “D’you want some clothes to sleep in?”

Bucky nodded and got to his feet after Natasha, taking her hand as she led him over to her wardrobe. “You got clothes that would fit me?”

Nat nodded confidently.

“How’d you end up with clothes that big?” Bucky murmured. “Nick ‘em off Clint?”

Nat shook her head. “Clint’s reek of his farm. And I wouldn’t give you the stolen ones, anyway.” she stepped forwards into the wardrobe and rummaged around for a moment, emerging with pale grey shorts and a dark pink hoodie. “You fancy giving these a try?”

The clothes fit him and while Nat was putting her own pyjamas on, Bucky lay on top of the duvet on her bed and breathed in the comforting smell of her perfume.

“You look really good in my clothes.” Natasha said, climbing into bed and braiding her hair simultaneously. She rested her head on Bucky’s chest. “You’re more comfortable than the mattress. You can stay.”

“You’d have let me stay anyway.” Bucky whispered.

Nat smiled up at him. “Forever and always.”

-

“There’s an apartment for sale near that bakery you like in Brooklyn. And pretty cheap, for the area, too” Bucky mentioned over lunch one day.

“Are you suggesting that we pay our own bills instead of having Stark do it for us?” Natasha raised an eyebrow.

“Yep.”

“I think— in principle that sounds like a terrible idea but I’d quite like to do it. And you have a huge amount of backpay, so we wouldn’t actually have to get a cheap flat if you wanted. Is that your big news for today?”

Bucky nodded. “Are you going to top it?”

“Yes. I’ve had enough of spying.”

Bucky nearly dropped his glass. “You’re quitting?”

Natasha nodded. “I’ll still be an Avenger, but only that. I want to spend more time here and with you and less time making sure passports are properly faked and stealing memory sticks.”

“That sounds like a pretty good idea to me.” Bucky smiled and leaned over to kiss her forehead.

-

“I now see why it was so cheap.” Natasha stared around the empty apartment with peeling wallpaper and no carpet.

Bucky nodded enthusiastically. “But there’s so much space! The place Steve and I had was about a third, maybe even a quarter, of this place. This is brilliant!”

“We’ve got a lot of work to do.” Natasha still hadn’t walked in any further than the doorway. She eyed the ceiling warily.

“But we get to do it together.” Bucky looked at Natasha with true joy on his face. “We can paint the walls and pick nice carpet and get some house plants and a cat and this could be home.”

Nat took a cautious step forward and shook her head. “This _will_ be home.”

-

The first thing they did after making the apartment safe for habitation was get a cat.

They went to a cat rescue home and saw a multitude of different cats that they stroked and played with. Natasha was stroking one with black and brown stripes across its back when Bucky called her over.

“Tasha? This one’s got three legs.”

-

Alpine came home with them that day and home really, truly, felt like home.

There was joy and happiness and peace.

They had a hand-embroidered tablecloth from the sisters who lived in the flat across from theirs, fresh flowers every week, a cat that slept at the foot of the bed. Natasha got a job teaching martial arts and self-defence at a local gym, Bucky volunteered at a youth centre. They bought bread from the bakery every day. On Friday nights they cooked new meals, the weekend was often spent at the Tower and bookshelves grew over more and more of their walls, filling up with all sorts of books in all sorts of different languages.

Then Christmas came.

Natasha knitted Bucky a blue jumper with the alpaca wool that looked like it had stars in it. He gave her an axe.

The cat got a $400 basket and spent most of Christmas Day sleeping in the cardboard box it had arrived in.

They had lunch with the Avengers, raced each other home in the afternoon and spent the evening curled up under a blanket on the sofa exchanging kisses. No TV, just giggling and Bucky attempting to say “Merry Christmas” in Russian, much to Nat’s glee, while Alpine demanded attention.

Life was perfect.

-

“Why is January so cold?” Bucky grumbled from his perch on top of the tank that Tony had decided they needed for the day’s mission to root out some French guy SHIELD wanted brought in. He was hiding, supposedly, with some relatively unknown but also supposedly relatively minor arms smugglers.

“Be grateful we’re not in Russia!” Natasha sang over the comms. She was full of energy after finally getting over the flu and being allowed to go on missions again.

“At least if we were in Russia we might see a polar bear.” Clint, who was sharing the top of the tank with Bucky, said. “If we’re lucky we might see a stray pigeon here.”

“Zip it, Clint. I’m about to knock on the door.” Tony yelled. He was waiting by the entrance to the hideout with a pair of grenades. “Three, two, one!”

Bucky covered his ears for a few moments and then readied his rifle for anyone that may come running towards them.

“I’ll take the first one.” Natasha said. “I think there’s someone coming now.”

“Is it our guy?” Bucky asked.

“I think it might be.” Nat gave a battle cry and launched herself into combat.

The rest of the team waited as Tony went to help extract the target. A few more soldiers came out, near-identical except for one hulking figure with long blond hair and a black mask across his mouth and nose. He managed to dodge the first two bullets Bucky fired at him and continued to charge towards the tank.

“I’ll take the big guy.” Bucky said, then jumped off the tank and charged straight back at the soldier.

It took all his concentration to avoid getting his head knocked clean off his shoulders as the soldier pulled out a baton and proceeded to swipe at Bucky with it. Bucky retaliated with a knife that bounced off his Kevlar vest and he jumped up to punch the man in the face, getting his shoulder stabbed and knocking the man’s mask off in the process.

Bucky froze. "Steve?"

"Who the hell is Steve?" the man spat. He would have split Bucky open from chin to collar had Nat not gone crashing into his side like a starving wolf pulling down a buffalo. She drove him away from Bucky as he now turned to attacking her.

Bucky stared at him in shock because it was Steve, it was absolutely one hundred percent Steve, just with long hair and eyes that didn't seem to know what they were looking at and—

-

Bucky woke up in the hospital a day later, Natasha at his bedside with a black eye and a chipped tooth.

“You passed out from shock and the stab to your shoulder.” she told him flatly, then squeezed his hand. “You’re all stitched up now.”

“There was a man.” Bucky muttered. “That man I was fighting until you jumped on him. Who is he? And what was the skull on his uniform and why did he look like Steve and—” he broke off. “Was that Steve?”

“There is a myth.” Natasha said quietly. “Someone called the Winter Soldier. No one in the intelligence community believes he exists because he has hundreds of kills to his name across nearly seventy years. He’s supposed to be a myth because he can do things humans can’t, like dodge bullets and fire shots that shouldn’t hit the target but do. Jump and run and carry and hit. That was him. The Winter Soldier.

“I saw him before. Iran. Shot the person I was protecting through me, then tossed a Jeep into a canyon and walked off while I lay passed out and bleeding over a dead body. No one knows how I got to hospital. The skull on his uniform—I did some digging. HYDRA.”

Bucky swore.

“I’m sorry, Bucky, but I don’t really know who the Winter Soldier is. Your eyes must have been playing tricks on you, showing you what you wanted to see. There’s no way it could have been him. Not even Steve could have survived his fall.”

Bucky’s brief glimmer of hope dimmed and he nodded, tongue growing thicker and throat getting heavier. “I know.” he tried to swallow the lump out of his throat. “I just— for a— I thought it was him and—” the tears came down and Nat gently wrapped her arms around him as he wept.

-

Seeing the man, the Winter Soldier— whoever he was— had shaken Bucky to his core. He put himself on leave from the Avengers for a couple of months, nightmares returning as he grieved.

He grieved and prayed and mourned. Grief for Steve, prayers for peace, mourning for a man who could have been but wasn’t.

Before the ice, he’d had a week to process Steve’s death.

You can’t process a loss like that in one week, so he hadn’t. And waking up in the future, everything had already seemed so unreal, he hadn’t come to terms with it then either. Steve’s death hit him now for the first time in a long time and it hurt like nothing he’d known before.

-

“I’m going to Slovakia in a couple of days.” Natasha said when she came home from the gym. “Had a call from Bruce. Clint’s found a warehouse. It needs watching and then destroying.”

“How long will you be gone for?” Bucky asked.

“Three or four weeks.”

Bucky winced.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

Nat put her arms around his waist and kissed his cheek. “I wouldn’t have agreed to go, but if we get this right, everything else can be done through tac teams. We can stay out of it and get back to rogue scientists and lost aliens.”

“I’ll miss you.” Bucky murmured.

“I’ll miss you too. But I’ll ring you whenever I get the chance.”

-

A week after Bucky had watched Natasha fly off in the Quinjet, she rang at quarter to seven in the morning.

“Everything’s going wonderfully.” she yelled down the phone over the sound of gunfire and yelling. “They’re very upset; someone’s gone missing, so the whole lot are panicking and letting their guard down. And we’ve found a café where we can play video games.”

“Is that what the screaming is?”

“Yep. Clint says hi. How’s Alpine?”

“I think she misses you.”

“I should be home sooner than we thought. Things are going good.” Natasha swore. “Clint! You can’t just—” she sighed. “Never mind. Tell Alpine I miss her too. I love you.”

“Love you too. Bring me back a t-shirt.”

“I might find a bazooka.”

“Done.”

Natasha laughed and Bucky smiled, though there was no one there to see it other than an incredibly pampered cat. “See you soon, lapushka.”

“Bye.”

Bucky put his phone back on the bedside table and got up to go and find some breakfast. He entered the kitchen and then heard a clatter from behind him. “Alpine, what’ve you do—”

He turned around and saw Steve Rogers standing by an open window with long hair, a bloody face and combat gear caked in mud.

It was the man from before.

It was Steve.

There were straps and pockets and hooks all over his clothes; a gun strapped to his back beneath a shield with a red skull on it. His fists were clenching and unclenching, nostrils flaring with air his eyes looked too scared to take in, body six-foot-something and built like a truck, but in Bucky’s eyes he was the smallest he’d ever been. “I know you.” Steve said in a whisper.

Bucky took a shaky breath and nodded. “Yeah, pal. You know me.”

“I think you were my handler.” Steve said. “And I think you must have been my favourite handler because they tried to make me forget you, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.” Steve swallowed. “Your name— your name is Bucky. And I’m with you ‘til— ‘til the end of the line.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings:  
> Hospital  
> Guns  
> Stabbing  
> Mention of character death  
> Mention of blood  
> Grief
> 
> Let me know if I missed anything!
> 
> silvermyfanwy on Tumblr!


	3. Hold on to me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Legit almost forgot about putting chapters up for this.  
> Chapter warnings are in end notes.  
> Stay safe and wash your hands.

Bucky took a deep breath and gave Steve a weak smile. “You hungry?”

Steve looked at Bucky hesitantly. “Am— am I need of nutrition?”

Bucky nodded. “Yeah. You hungry?”

Steve nodded cautiously.

“Bacon?”

Steve looked at Bucky, puzzled.

“Do you want bacon?” Bucky asked patiently.

“I’m not allowed to want.” Steve said simply. “I take what I am given and I am thankful for it.”

Bucky’s heart did not break into a million pieces as many would have done. Anger simply started brewing in the pit of his stomach and began to ferment until a time when he could unleash the full fury of it on the people who had done this to Steve.

That would have to wait. He had more important things to do first.

Steve _needed_ him.

“Who gives you permission to eat?” Bucky asked.

“My handler.”

“Who is your handler?”

Steve’s face crumpled and he suddenly looked very, very scared. “You. You are my handler, aren’t you? I thought you were my handler and I— I came to find you and I wanted you to be my handler but I’m not allowed to want and I shouldn't have left them to come and find you, so this must be my punishment for it—they’ve made you not my—”

His words got more and more tangled up, breathing getting louder and louder.

“It’s okay, it’s okay!” Bucky took a step forward, holding up his hands in an attempt to placate Steve. “I’m— I’m your handler.”

“I thought that maybe this was a punishment for me wanting you to be my handler. That they would make you not my handler.”

“No punishments here.” Bucky soothed. “They won’t take me away. You haven’t got anything to worry about. Come with me and we’ll have bacon.”

Steve followed Bucky into the kitchen, silent as a shadow, possibly because he was one. Bucky gestured for him to sit down and Steve hesitated, eyes suddenly full of tears. “I— I—”

“You can sit down.” Bucky said gently. “And— and you can talk. And ask questions. And if you’re confused about something you can tell me and I’ll try to help.”

He didn’t know where he was getting the words from or how he knew that Steve needed to hear those words exactly, but he did.

-

 _My favourite, my favourite, my favourite._ Steve thought. _Of course you were my favourite._

Steve sat on the chair and counted the stitches in an orange flower on the tablecloth while recording all the sounds Bucky made. There was a clash of metal as he got a frying pan out of a cupboard, the click of the fridge's hinges and the sucking noise of the seal as the fridge opened, plastic rustling, a whoosh of flame after the click of a spark and then the smell of gas merged with the smell of butter Bucky had put in the pan. The packet of bacon was opened, Bucky sneezed quietly, Steve's fingers closed around the edge of the chair he wants to look to check to protect colds can kill—

Can they?

(He can.)

Then there was the smell of bacon and colds were forgotten.

It smelt _good_ and Steve knew he was allowed some. That’s what Bucky had said, anyway.

Bucky clanged about some more with a cupboard door and Steve was pretty sure he heard plates being set out. The flame was turned off and the sizzling bacon placed in front of Steve on a blue plate with green flecks.

He couldn’t look at the meat. If they ever let him have meat, if he was ever out long enough to warrant real food and not the nutrients they pumped into him, he had scraps and fat and offal. Not the proper stuff.

“You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to.” Bucky said gently.

Steve shook his head vehemently. “I do want to eat it.” he looked at Bucky to check for permission. “Can I?”

Bucky nodded. “You can use your fingers if you want.”

Steve picked up a strip with shaking fingers and bit a tiny piece off the end. “It tastes real.” he whispered. “It’s real food.” the flavour had gone crashing through his mouth and down his gullet, waking up taste buds that had been numbed into sleep by the tasteless gunk he was normally given. He took another bite. “Thank you.”

“You don’t need to thank me for giving you real food.” Bucky said. “You deserve it.”

Steve looked at the bacon, confused, like he was trying to work out how it could be a punishment.

“Not in that way!” Bucky said hastily, realising his mistake. “You deserve it in a good way. You have the right to real food.”

Steve looked at Bucky like he didn’t quite believe him, but he continued making his way through the bacon anyway.

“You don’t have to eat it all if you don’t want to.” Bucky said. “Or if you start to feel sick, you can stop. You can have more food later.”

Steve finished the bacon and then looked at Bucky as if he was awaiting his next order.

“Have you had enough?”

Steve didn’t answer.

“Do you want some more?”

Steve shook his head.

“Do you want to get cleaned up or put some other clothes on? Make it more comfortable for you?”

“A clean uniform?”

Bucky shook his head. “Clothes like mine. D’you wanna come and see?” Bucky got to his feet and started to walk back to his room. He could hear Steve following him silently.

Bucky held some clothes out to Steve that he thought might fit and Steve instantly began to take his uniform off. Everything was folded neatly and placed in a pile on the floor, and as the layers fell away, Bucky saw how little he had been taken care of.

Despite the cuts and bruises and lacerations and the peeling skin and the gashes and the grazes and the scabs and the scattering of green and yellow and blue and purple bruises all over his skin, Steve put on the sweatpants, t-shirt and hoodie Bucky had given him without flinching.

-

“His skin was made of damsons.” he whispered to Natasha over the phone. Steve had fallen asleep not long after he’d put the clothes on. “He was so bruised, he was so broken, his skin looked like it was made of damsons. They hurt him so bad.”

“And he thinks you’re his handler?”

“Yeah. I think— I’m hoping it wears off. That he starts to come back to his senses— well, not his senses. He’s got them. Just— that he’s allowed to be himself again.”

“Have you told anyone else that he’s there?”

“No.”

“SHIELD might have something that could help his brain.”

“SHIELD would lock him up and use him for themselves.”

“Hydra’s gonna be after him.”

“They won’t get him.”

Natasha had never heard Bucky sound quite so resolute in anything.

“They won’t get him. I won’t let them.” Bucky hissed and swore angrily.

“You okay?”

“Nat, I failed him once and it was one time too many. Even if he stays like this for the rest of his life, I’m gonna look after him. Even if it means I never leave the apartment again. Or I spend the next fifty years being his— his handler.” Bucky spat the word out with a vengeance. “Nat, I had to tell him I was his handler so he wouldn’t panic and I’ve never felt sicker in my life.” his voice caught slightly. “And they’ve— they’ve treated him worse than a dog.”

“I will kill them.” Natasha promised. “And I can go in and out of the apartment for you. Does he know you two used to…”

“No.”

“Are you going to tell him?”

“No. It would be unfair.”

“Are you going to be okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Is he?”

-

Steve woke about an hour after the end of the phone call. Bucky was sitting in a chair in the corner of the room and he smiled at Steve as he blinked the sleep out of his eyes. “Hey.”

“Bucky.” Steve croaked. “You didn’t leave.”

Bucky shook his head. “Never again.”

“You left me before?”

“Once. I was told you were dead, so I had to leave you. But you weren’t dead, so I left you when I shouldn’t have and I’m sorry.” Bucky’s voice hitched on the last syllable.

Steve’s face crumpled and he whined, shrugging the duvet off his shoulders and extending his arms out tentatively to Bucky. “I let you go too.”

Bucky laughed weakly and slowly walked over to Steve. “But you followed me.”

Steve got out of bed and hugged Bucky tightly.

Bucky’d forgotten how much it could hurt.

“I’d follow you anywhere.”

“I think you already have, pal.” Bucky whispered.

Steve pulled away and Bucky could practically hear him thinking. “I can protect you now.”

“You’ve _always_ protected me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings:  
> Steve asks for permission to eat  
> Description of bacon  
> Description of bruises  
> There's a lot of stuff about food and Steve seeing it as nutrition, rather than food.  
> Steve sees Bucky as his handler
> 
> Come say hi on tumblr!


	4. Does it shock you to see?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for warnings.
> 
> Come say hi on tumblr! silvermyfanwy

Steve stepped away from Bucky and stared at him blankly. “What is my mission?”

“No mission.”

“Not the chair.” Steve whimpered. “Not the cold, not the chair, please, I don’t want to be taken away from you again—”

“No chair.” Bucky said hastily, somehow feeling the anguish Steve was in. “No chair or cold. We can turn the heating up if you want.”

Steve hesitated, fighting himself over whether or not he should speak. “Yes please. I— I’m sorry I called you by your name.”

“You can call me by my name. You don’t need to be sorry. You don’t need to be sorry for  _ anything _ . Come on, I’ll show you where the heating panel is and then you can adjust it whenever you want. How d’you feel about that?”

Steve nodded. “Yeah. Yeah. Good?”

“It’s up to you whether it’s good or not.”

Steve paused. “It’s good.”

Bucky opened the box on the wall that covered the heating unit and showed Steve the switches. “This makes it warmer. This makes it colder. Do you want to try?”

Steve shook his head. “Warmer please.”

“Alright.” Bucky turned the heat up and watched Steve bite his lip.

“What happened to me?” Steve asked, voice quavering. “What happened to your arm? Did they take you away from me because I failed to protect you and you lost your arm?”

“I was in a plane crash.” Bucky said. “I lost my arm. It wasn’t your job to protect me.”

“Did I know you when you crashed the plane?”

Bucky hesitated. He wasn’t sure how to answer. “Yes.”

“Was I there?”

“No.”

With that word Steve was the asset again— asset or Asset? No, he must be the asset because he was only the Asset when they spoke of him with pride and right then, he would be in deepest shame. “Requesting information on the next mission objective.”

“There’s no mission objective, Steve. No mission, Steve, you—”

“I’m not Steve.” the asset said desperately. Steve was too good for him, Steve would have saved Bucky. “I’m the asset, the soldier, I’m soldat. I can’t be Steve.”

“You’re Steve.” Bucky said quietly. “You’re Steve and you’re my best friend.”

Emotions were higher than the asset had been trained to handle. He didn’t know how to regulate them. They built and built, his heart rate became faster and he took a step back. Water began to well up in his eyes but he barely noticed because the feelings were so strong.

Then his back hit the wall and tears began to spill down his face.

“Why am I crying?” he asked Bucky anxiously. “What is wrong with me? Targets cry, not me. Where’s the tank? I need to be reset, don’t I?”

“Reset?” Bucky looked horrified. “What are you talking about? Why would you be reset?”

“Why don’t you know about resetting?” the tears were beginning to ebb away with the Feelings Steve had experienced from Bucky’s statement. Maybe the asset would let himself pretend to be Steve for a bit. “You’re my handler. You decide when I need to be reset.”

“All you did was cry.” Bucky said gently. “That’s okay. It’s not a bad thing, it just means you had a bit too much of an emotion and your brain needed to get it out.”

Bucky’s therapist would be proud of him when she found out he’d said that.

-

Steve found sleeping hard. From what Bucky could gather, he wasn’t used to being out of a cryo chamber for more than a few days at a time. By the time he’d reached the apartment, he’d been out for a week and was struggling to adjust to the sleeping patterns of normal humans. It seemed like since he had been captured by HYDRA, he had spent most of his time out of cryo wide awake and had rarely been given missions that lasted long enough for him to need to sleep.

“I just stay awake for three days.” Steve explained to Bucky simply. After a few hours of wrestling internally with himself, there had been no more doubt in his mind that he was “Steve.” That was what Bucky called him and who Bucky said he was and he trusted Bucky more than he trusted himself.

“That’s not good for you.” Bucky said.

“I was fine.” Steve defended, folding his arms.

Bucky rolled his eyes. “That’s one thing that hasn’t changed, then. You’re still as stubborn as ever.”

As the days went on, Steve would spend about ten hours awake before he crashed in Bucky’s bed and slept for fourteen. The sleep was either deep and still or interrupted by nightmares.

Bucky would regularly wake up out on the sofa to find Steve standing over him or at the window, guarding him. Sometimes he wouldn’t even realise he was doing it.

Steve didn’t like to be away from Bucky, so his sleeping patterns soon began to assimilate accordingly. Other people still made Steve nervous, so when food was delivered to the door, Bucky would let Steve know so he could hide in the other room. Alpine, who had been on one of her three-day jaunts around the city when Steve first arrived, was rather perturbed to come home and find a strange new man living there. She and Steve avoided each other for the first few days, but then Alpine got used to him and stopped running away whenever he sat on the sofa.

“Steve, do you want to learn to feed Alpine?” Bucky suggested one day as he watched her tentatively climb onto Steve’s lap and make herself comfortable.

Steve glanced down at Alpine and nodded. Alpine decided that she didn’t want to sit down yet and climbed off.

“Come on. Kitchen.” Bucky took Steve into the kitchen and took a bowl and a box of cat food out of a cupboard. “There’s a mug on that shelf, one with little flags on it. Fill that up with kibble and that’s what she gets.”

Steve picked up the mug and duly put the cat food in the bowl. He stared at it for a moment. “I think she needs more.” he said, then added another half scoop to the bowl.

Bucky closed his eyes and gave a prayer of thanks. Extra food all the time would probably make Alpine fat, but he could make sure she got more exercise to make up for it. It was worth it for the fact that Steve had made a decision himself.

Things were looking up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve thinks Bucky is his handler  
> Steve thinks he's going to be punished (he isn't)  
> Mention of a plane crash  
> There's a bit where Steve thinks of himself as the asset instead of Steve, so tiny bit of self-objectification/self-dehumanization I guess.


	5. When man recognises

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings in end notes.  
> Stay safe everyone!

Nat managed to come home a week earlier than planned. She texted Bucky when she was at the door.

“Steve?” Bucky looked at Steve over the table. “Natasha’s here.”

Steve froze. “In the apartment?”

“Not yet. She’s outside the door. I’m going to let her in. Do you want to come with me?”

“I’m going to wait here.”

“Alright.” Bucky’s heart was beating faster with a combination of fear and joy. He’d missed Natasha sorely but her return was overshadowed by the fact that he wasn’t sure how Steve would handle having her around.

-

“I knew him.” Natasha had told Bucky hastily over the phone a week ago. “There was a man, in the Red Room. They would have him train us, spar with us. They never told us who he was. I fought with him many times; they thought I learned better under him than with the other trainers. They were right.” her voice was grim.

“There’s more, isn’t there?”

“We found files in the base today. He was the Winter Soldier. They had the Winter Soldier train with us; they kept a mask on him when we saw him to keep him anonymous. When I got older, I was sent on missions with him a few times, without the mask, but I only knew him as Piotr, not Steve or the Winter Soldier. They told me that he was a Red Room operative and, at the time, he had black hair, so I never made a connection to Steve." She took a deep breath. "But it’s the same face, the same eyes. And the records confirm it was all the same person.”

Bucky swallowed. “What else?”

“I loved him.” Natasha whispered. “I admired him from the first day I met him. I was 20 by the time we started missions together; after the first one they started to let him remember me so we would work together better in the future. That was when I started to love him.”

She was silent for a moment.

“I kissed him. And then, after that, at the end of every mission I would kiss him before we had to go back. That was it. Then he got sent off somewhere and I got sent off somewhere else and I didn’t see him again until the day he shot me.”

-

Bucky opened the door. He wasn’t sure whether he flung himself into Natasha’s arms or if she flung herself into his, but they met somewhere in the middle and clung to each other.

“I missed you so much.” Bucky whispered. Natasha’s jacket smelt of the soap at the launderette.

Natasha was silent and her silence was worth more than any words.

She pulled away. “I need to see him.” she whispered.

They went into the apartment and Bucky stayed in the kitchen doorway as Natasha walked in. Steve was sitting at the table with his hands placed in front of him, fingers splayed, staring down.

“Hi.” Nat said softly.

Steve looked up at her and smiled.

Bucky could have wept. He hadn’t seen that smile since before the war.

Steve stood up and held his hand out to Natasha. Bucky could see his hand shaking. “Hi. It’s nice to meet you.”

-

Just as Steve had managed to adjust to life with Bucky, he managed to adjust to life with Natasha.

He just didn’t do it in the way either Bucky or Natasha had hoped for.

“Where do I sleep tonight?” Steve asked, voice quavering as they ate greasy pizza spread over the table. “Natasha should have the bed, Bucky’s on the sofa. I can sleep on the fl—”

“ _You_ are staying in the bed.” Bucky said.

Steve frowned. “But where will—”

“I have a sleeping bag. I can sleep on the floor.” Natasha said calmly.

“But…”

“I will sleep on the floor. You will sleep on the bed.”

“Confirm.” Steve hung his head and wiped his fingers on each other. He didn’t look happy about the arrangement but didn’t mention it again.

“I’m gonna stay at Sam’s tonight.” Natasha announced suddenly.

Bucky stared at her in shock. “What?”

“I’m gonna stay at Sam’s tonight.” Natasha repeated. Her body was tense but her face seemed perfectly relaxed. “I’ll help clean up and then I’ll head over.”

“But—”

“Pass me your plate.” Natasha told Bucky, mouth still full of pizza. “I’ll go and put it in the trash. Steve, could you pass me yours, please?”

Steve handed Natasha his plate without looking at her and Natasha grabbed the pizza boxes up in her arms. She bent them loudly then put them into the trash can with a clatter. “I’ll grab my bag and then I’ll be off. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I’ll walk you to the door.” Bucky said quickly, pushing his chair back with a screech that made Steve flinch. “I’m sorry.”

Steve didn’t respond.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Steve.” Nat said softly. “It was lovely to meet you.”

Steve's smile was strained. “And you.”

Natasha walked silently out of the apartment and Bucky shut the door behind them.

“How on earth are you gonna get to Sam’s tonight? He lives in DC!” Bucky hissed.

“I’m not going to Sam’s. I’m going to the Tower, but I didn’t want to mention it in front of Steve in case they've programmed him against it. The Avengers and all that.”

“Why are you going? Is something wrong?”

Natasha sighed and wrapped her arms around Bucky’s neck. She went on tiptoe so she could kiss his forehead. “Steve’s not ready for me to stay here yet and I don't know if I am either. He doesn't remember me properly and the memories could come back at any moment if I’m here. It could get messy. We’ve got more stuff to sort out before I can come back properly.”

“Like what?”

“Steve needs help.”

“I’m helping him.”

“ _Professional_ help.” Natasha stroked Bucky’s cheek. “We need to tell Sam. He can help. And he’ll keep a secret.”

Bucky stared at the floor. He knew she was right.

“And then we need to find somewhere to live where Steve can have his own room and we can have our own room. You love him more than you love this place. I don’t think I can move back in until we can all have enough space, for my sake and Steve's.”

Bucky swallowed thickly. “He didn’t recognise you.”

“Don’t remind me.” Natasha muttered. She tied her hair up as she spoke. “I need to go. I’ll text you when I’m back.”

Bucky kissed her softly. “I love you.”

“I’ll meet up with you tomorrow afternoon.” Natasha pulled her coat on and swung a bag over her shoulder. “I love you too. I’m sorry things haven’t worked out the way you wanted.”

“We’ll get there one day.”

Natasha squeezed Bucky’s hand and walked down the stairs.

-

“Are you okay?” Bucky asked Steve as he went back into the kitchen.

“She scared me.” Steve whispered. “She’s a bigger threat than I am because they let her remember.”

Bucky sat next to him, careful not to make his chair screech again. “Is that why she scared you?”

Steve nodded. “She knows things I don’t. Does she know I knew her?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know where I know her from or who she is. I just _knew_ her.” Steve turned towards Bucky, head down.

Bucky hugged him and Steve clutched the back of his t-shirt.

“Do you trust her?”

“Do _I_ trust her?”

Steve nodded.

“Yes.”

“Then I trust her too.”

-

Natasha told Sam what was going on and he managed to restrain himself from asking her if she was high or if she had been drinking alcohol from Asgard. “So Captain America, the _original_ Captain America, is alive and also the Winter Soldier and also living in your apartment with Bucky.”

“Yes.”

"And he was there for like two weeks before you got back, which was what? Three days ago? And he hasn’t killed anyone?”

“He’s not the Winter Soldier like he used to be.”

“And you want me to try and help him be more like his old self?”

Natasha shook her head. “We want him to think of himself as Steve Rogers, not the Winter Soldier, and as a human. We want him to be happy and safe and feel secure.”

“Is this another one of your potentially world-shattering secrets you expect me to keep?”

“Yep.”

Sam groaned and put his head in his hands. “I hate it when you do this to me.”

“At least it’s not the thing about Area 52 actually being an alien embassy again.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better!”

-

“Hi.”

“Who are you?”

That was progress in itself. Steve stayed sitting on the sofa, Alpine on his lap, as he warily looked at Sam leaning against the doorway. Bucky and Natasha were standing behind Sam, peering anxiously over his shoulder to see how the encounter would go.

“I’m Sam.”

“I’m Steve. Why are you here?”

“To help you feel safe.”

“You’re not doing a good job of it.” Steve said bluntly. “I don’t know who you are or if you’re going to try to kill me. That makes me feel not safe.”

“Let’s make a deal.” Sam suggested. Natasha and Bucky shared a look of alarm. “Staying cooped up probably isn’t helping you feel safe either. Let’s go for a run. Just you and me. I’ll have plenty of opportunities to try to kill you, but I won’t because I don’t want to kill you and I don’t want to kill anyone. All of that evidence of me _not_ killing you will help your brain realise that you can trust me and we’ll carry on from there. And, let’s be real—even if I _did_ try to kill you, you could take me in a fight, couldn’t you?”

Steve snorted like that was so blatantly apparent it didn’t even need saying.

Sam bit his lip and scuffed his shoe on the floor. “Bet I can run faster than you.”

Steve glared at him. “No way.”

Sam folded his arms. “Prove it.”

To Natasha and Bucky’s complete surprise, Steve nodded and followed Sam out of the front door.

“What just happened?” Bucky asked.

“I don’t know.”

-

They returned half an hour later, Sam draped over Steve’s shoulders, panting and dripping sweat.

“He gave up halfway through.” Steve announced, then slid Sam off his shoulders and onto the floor.

“Same time next week?” Sam asked, slumped against the wall as Bucky went to get him a glass of water.

Steve smiled at him. Genuinely, truly smiled. “If you want your ass kicked again.”

Steve walked away into what had become his room and Bucky felt so joyous he almost didn’t pour Sam’s water over his head.

-

The running continued for two more weeks before Sam sprained his ankle and had to rest it.

Steve’s face fell when Bucky told him the news. “Oh.”

“I could go running with you, if you want. Or Natasha could.”

Natasha was still living at the Tower, although she came to the apartment every day and Steve was slowly becoming more and more comfortable around her, though he still didn’t quite know who she had been in his past.

Steve shook his head. “I only want to run with Sam.”

“Maybe Sam would come round and you could talk to him for a while once a week.”

“What would I talk to him about?”

Bucky thought for a moment. “Let me make a call. I’ve got a favour I can cash in.”

Steve looked slightly alarmed and Bucky immediately regretted his choice of words.

“Everything’s fine, it’s just a favour from a friend.”

That didn’t seem to ease Steve’s feelings at all.

“Do you trust me?” Bucky asked quietly.

“You’re my handler.” Steve’s voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. “Of course I trust you.”

-

“Well, well, well! If it isn’t the prodigal son!” Tony sounded delighted to have a call from Bucky. “We thought you’d quit the team and moved to Morocco. I haven’t seen you in three months and it’s been seven weeks since I heard from you. Why the radio silence?”

“It’s been, um, I’ve had a lot going on.” Bucky said, conscience clean. He wasn’t lying. “I need a favour.”

“You want a smoke machine in your arm?” Tony asked eagerly. “I’ve got a heck of a lot of upgrades waiting here for you and you need to come in so I can do some maintenance.”

“Not a smoke machine. I need one of those video game things that you can play the racing game on.”

“Mario Kart?”

“That’s the one.”

“You coming to get it or are you remaining a recluse?”

“Just send the damn thing over, Stark.”

-

Steve picked up Mario Kart in a grand total of seven minutes and was soon running both Bucky and Natasha into the dust.

He apologised every time he beat them.

“Steve, why do you always apologise for beating us at something but you never apologise to Sam when you beat him at stuff?” Natasha asked.

“You’re my handlers.” Steve said simply. “He is not.”

-

Steve _conquered_ Sam at Mario Kart.

-

After Steve’s 32nd consecutive win, Sam negotiated a new deal.

“I don’t want to play Mario Kart anymore.” he announced.

“You sure you’re not just a sore loser?” Steve asked.

“I’m sure.” Sam said firmly. “And why are you always mean to me about losing?”

“I’m not!”

Sam shot Steve an indignant look.

“Okay, maybe I am a little bit.” Steve admitted.

“Nat beat you at Mario Kart and you weren’t mean to her.”

Steve didn’t answer.

“Steve?”

“I’m not mean to her. And I’m not mean to you, really, either. And you’re not much less better than me at Mario Kart.”

“I notice how you don’t say the same thing about running.” Sam drawled. “And it doesn’t matter if you’re better than me or Bucky or Nat at something.”

Steve frowned. “Yes it does. If I’m better than Natasha or Bucky— if I _show_ that I’m better than Natasha or Bucky at something—then I’m stepping out of line. You aren’t a handler. I can show you up all I want.”

“Gee, thanks.” Sam rolled his eyes. “But there are no lines to step out of here, Steve. There’s nothing you could do that would make Bucky or Nat mad at you.”

“But they might get hurt or upset.” Steve said quietly, then pulled the biggest scowl Sam had ever seen him wear. “They’ll be upset I told you all this, cause I’m not allowed to give people information like that if I’m not on a mission.”

“They won’t be upset.” Sam said.

“How do you know?”

Sam was quiet for a moment. “When you were with HYDRA, what did they see you as?”

“The Asset.”

“Bucky and Nat don’t see you as the Asset or an asset or the Winter Soldier or a weapon. They see you as Steve.”

Steve stared at his hands. “Why?”

“Cause that’s who you are. And you don’t have to be anything but Steve Rogers anymore. You’re your own human. No one owns you.”

“Steve Rogers was a good man.” Steve’s voice was scratchy and low.

“Steve Rogers _is_ a good man.” Sam said quietly. “You returned two lost dogs, helped an old man cross the street and caught a runaway soccer ball for some kids in _one run_ and still beat me. And you broke up that fight.”

“And then I rubbed it in your face that I won our race.”

Sam snorted with laughter. “Have you seen Bucky beat me at something? _That’s_ rubbing it into someone’s face. You were just being human; Barnes takes it to a _whole other level_.”

“I was the Winter Soldier for a long time. I don’t know if I can be good enough to be Steve Rogers again.”

“Do you want to be?”

Steve stared at the floor. “I don’t know.”

-

“I think I’ve found a house,” Nat whispered, waking Bucky up with a gentle elbow to the ribs. The laptop lying on her stomach made her face glow blue. Bucky hadn’t been expecting that and the surprise made him roll over in shock and hit his head on the side of the sofa. He grunted.

“Four bedrooms. Living room, dining room, kitchen, two bathrooms but one’s an en-suite. Garden. We can decorate but it doesn’t _need_ it. Basement.”

Bucky took the laptop off Natasha and scrolled through the photos. “I’ve never had a garden before.”

“We can grow vegetables. Or flowers. Do you think Steve would like that?”

“He might.” Bucky lingered over a photo of one of the bedrooms. “If he gets back into art, I think he’d love this room. Looks like it catches the light nice.”

“Neighbourhood’s only a few blocks over from here. Seems alright.”

“How much is it selling for?”

“Within budget.”

“Do you think we should get it?”

“Do you want to be able to stop sleeping on the couch?” there was a quiet joy in Natasha’s voice and Bucky wrapped his arms around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder. “I’ll book a viewing in the morning; I might be able to see it in the afternoon.” she turned the laptop off and pushed it under the sofa.

“You ever had a garden before?” Bucky asked, kissing Natasha’s shoulder and then her jaw.

She shook her head. “I could do yoga outside.” she wiggled underneath the blanket so their positions changed and her head was resting on Bucky’s chest. “Real outside, not the top of Avengers Tower.”

“You never let me do yoga on Stark’s roof with you.”

Bucky felt her pull a face against his sternum. “I only tried it once. Got rained on.”

“I’ll buy you an umbrella.”

Natasha was already asleep.

-

Natasha went to view the house while Bucky played Mario Kart with Steve, who didn’t apologise when he won.

“Can I make dinner tonight?” Steve asked.

“Of course. What do you want to make?”

“Meat. Fried. Boiled potatoes.”

“What kinda meat d’you want?”

Steve hesitated and turned his head toward Bucky with a scrunched-up, hopeful kind of face. “Pork chops?”

“I’ll ask Nat to pick some up on her way home.”

Steve’s cheeks moved like they were trying to smile but he wasn’t quite letting himself. “Thank you.”

“No problem. Another race?”

Steve nodded. “Where’s Natasha?”

Bucky wasn’t sure what to tell Steve. They hadn’t talked about telling Steve, hadn’t talked about their mutual presumption that Steve would be moving with them. “She’s looking at a house.”

“Is she— why is she looking at a house?”

“To see if we could move there.”

“Is the ‘we’ you and Natasha, or me and you, or you and me and Natasha, or you and Natasha and Alpine, or you and Alpine?” Steve’s gaze was fixed rigidly on the TV screen. His fingers had curled tighter around his controller.

“Me and you and Natasha and Alpine, if you want to come with us. You don’t have to; you could stay here if you wanted or we could find you somewhere else to live if you wanted that.” Bucky trailed off, unsure of what else to say.

Steve turned the TV off and stared at Bucky as if he was being ludicrous. “I’m with you ‘til the end of the line, pal. I ain’t goin’ anywhere without you anymore.”

Bucky couldn’t blink away the tears fast enough. “You serious?”

“The only time we’ve really been apart since we met, I got kidnapped and turned into an assassin against my will and you crashed a plane into the Atlantic.”

“Arctic.”

“I think that’s a pretty good sign that we’re not supposed to be separated.” Steve said.

Bucky smiled. “Yeah. Yeah, I think it is.”

He tried to ignore the butterflies in his stomach he had from looking at Steve.

They were the kind he got when he saw Natasha.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings:  
> Slight, implied, brief mentions of dehumanization of objectification to do with HYDRA viewing Steve as the asset instead of a person.


	6. Your first name is free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my favourite chapter of the whole fic and there is one particular description I am very proud of. See if you can guess which one it is!  
> See end notes for chapter warnings.  
> Stay safe!

Natasha put a deposit on the house after viewing it and they moved in two weeks later.

It was supposed to have been Steve who got first pick of the rooms but in reality it was Alpine, who decided that under no circumstances would anyone be able to put a bed in one of them because the light that reflected from the ceiling onto the shiny black floor must be protected and chased at all cost.

While Steve and Natasha stood in the doorway and watched Alpine’s delight, Bucky wandered up the next flight of stairs to a room at the front of the house. There was an enormous bay window that looked like it would catch light for most of the day; this was the room Bucky had thought Steve might like to paint or draw in. “Steve?”

Within moments Steve was standing behind him, staring out at the view.

“You could have this room for doing art, if you wanted.” Bucky said hopefully.

Steve was silent.

Bucky glanced over his shoulder to see if Steve was okay and much to his shock, Steve’s face had become very pale but also incredibly hopeful. “Could I?” he whispered.

Bucky nodded. “Of course. You could have an easel, paint the skyline.”

“Could paint Alpine.” Steve said. “You reckon she’ll sit still for long enough?”

“No.”

They giggled.

“Boys!” Natasha yelled up the stairs, voice higher than normal and excited. “Guess what I just found!”

They encountered Nat halfway up the stairs. A smile was spread across her face from ear to ear. “I didn’t get to see if before, their kids were up there when they showed the house. They said that their girls used it as a playroom, so I was expecting walls with unicorns painted on them or something, but it’s _full of bookshelves_ ! We could have a _library_!”

-

By mutual consensus, they unpacked all the boxes of kitchen stuff first. The boxes were all labelled in either Steve’s neat handwriting or Natasha’s messy scrawl. You could tell which boxes she had packed late at night because the Cyrillic alphabet had begun to creep into her English words. Plates and forks were taken out of boxes, stacked on shelves in cupboards and filed into doors. Knives were placed in a holder by the wall, pans stacked inside each other and Bucky’s beloved cheeseboard put on the table. With a bit of concentration and the fact that they’d all had some level of military training, they had the room set up in an hour.

Steve was silent as they unpacked, to start with, and asked where Natasha and Bucky wanted things placed, but then stopped asking permission. He put the things he cooked with where he wanted them to go. He asked what they were having for lunch. He drank from Bucky’s water bottle, then walked into the hall where they had jammed all the boxes and picked up the first one he reached.

“It says ‘Books, 1/17’. Have you packed _seventeen_ boxes of books?” he asked Natasha incredulously.

“Four of those boxes are his.” Natasha said flatly, pointing at Bucky. “And I had books in storage.”

“One of the boxes has Pepper’s books in it.” Bucky chimed in.

Now Natasha was looking incredulous. “Why does Pepper have her books in our house?”

“She was worried they were going to get incinerated while Tony was going through some programming blips with his bots.” Bucky said. “She never came to pick them back up.”

“Who are Tony and Pepper?” Steve asked curiously.

“Some friends of ours.” Natasha said. “Hey, they could come round for dinner now! We’ve got enough space.” she turned to Steve. “Then you could meet them too, if you wanted.”

There was a shine in Steve’s eyes. “I’d like to do that.”

Bucky had taken the box off Steve and was looking through the books. “You’ve got all the Percy Jackson books?”

“They’re good.” Natasha defended.

Bucky had a closer look at them. “Oh, man. I’ve gotta learn Greek to read them.”

“I’ll translate it for you.” Steve said, smiling. “But you have to promise to start writing stories again. You were really good at it and you really enjoyed it.”

A look of utter glee came onto Natasha’s face. “You wrote _stories_?”

-

They settled into their new house in weeks.

By the end of month two, it was home.

Some of the upstairs rooms had needed repainting, as well as the walls on either side of the stairs. It was Steve who ended up painting them— Natasha had started while he was napping one day and then went out to teach her self-defence class, Steve woke up, saw the state the walls were in, took matters into his own hands and when she came back he was mixing paint to start on the second wall— and he took a deep pride and joy in it that Bucky didn’t think he’d ever seen him have.

Gradually, gradually, the Winter Soldier—

The Winter Soldier didn’t die or perish or heal.

The Winter Soldier wasn’t hidden or locked up or banished.

It was like the Winter Soldier was attached to Steve, a ribbon around both their wrists to keep them tied together. The Winter Soldier had lived in Steve’s head, been _placed_ there, then slowly moved out because of the muddle of things that had happened over the last few months. The Winter Soldier had moved from Steve’s brain to his ear, through his hair and over his shoulder. The Winter Soldier began to float away, string pulled taut.

One day the string snapped and the Winter Soldier flew away.

That wasn’t to say that the Winter Soldier never came back; not in the slightest. The Winter Soldier would still come gliding back occasionally, perch on his shoulder or whisper in his ear or simply float in the air two steps behind him.

When it left, perhaps it would have been better to say that it simply moved somewhere further back so Steve had more room to be himself.

But he was himself, and that was the important bit, wasn’t it?

-

Tony and Pepper came round for dinner.

“What should I wear?” Bucky asked Natasha at breakfast. He’d attempted to make pancakes, Steve had attempted to help fix it, Natasha had attempted to smile when she tried them and then got herself a bowl of cereal.

Natasha thought for a moment. “They’ll come wearing fancy clothes; we must match them.”

“I ain’t got anything smart.” Bucky said. “You got anything smart, Steve?”

“Nope.”

“We’ll go shopping.” Bucky told Natasha. “You’ve got fancy stuff, haven’t you?”

Natasha gave him a look and Bucky blushed sheepishly. Steve cackled.

-

“Fashion’s changed a bit.” Bucky said helpfully, swinging an arm around Steve’s shoulders as they walked along the street. “But you probably noticed that, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” Steve said patiently. “Yes, somehow I had.”

“Is this still okay?” Bucky asked quietly. “We can always go back if you want to.”

Steve opened his mouth to answer and then Stark Tower came into sight and he stopped walking. “Who the hell let that thing get built? It’s hideous!”

“Uh…” Bucky thought it prudent not to answer with ‘it was built by the man who’s coming to dinner tonight’ so came up with another answer. “Some guy, I think.”

“I was fine and then I saw that monstrosity.” Steve grumbled. “I’ve seen it before but never _seen_ it, you know?”

He remembered everything.

He thought he did, anyway.

He remembered the smell of vinegar from the deli; the dent in the wall by the door of their old apartment in the 30s, from when they’d been taking chairs in, that they’d always tried to hide when the landlord came round; screaming; the worn blanket he only used when he got sick; blood; the shine Peggy always managed to keep on her hair; the sign he’d spent so long painting on the front of the shoe shop; death.

Murder.

Life pouring out of people.

There were gaps, of course. They’d managed to erase some parts of his memory, but every dead body— well, every dead body that he’d been sent to kill specifically— remained.

He thought he remembered everything.

The dead bodies were—

Haunting. Terrifying, traumatic, guilt inducing, horrific, bloody.

But he’d taken lives before he’d been captured. War was nasty in every way possible.

Sam had told him again and again that it wasn’t really him who’d killed those people. He’d been used; he hadn’t had control of himself.

He was working his head around it.

That and inflation.

-

“I’ve got a nice load of backpay.” Bucky said breezily as Steve stared at the price tags of the suits in absolute horror.

“How much backpay?”

“A lot? And I’ve had jobs. Got pay from that. Shall we catch the subway home?” Bucky slung the bag of shirts over his arm.

Steve hesitated. “The subway?” he asked cautiously. “I— underground is…”

Bucky thought for a moment. “We can walk home, if you want."

Steve nodded and kept close to Bucky as they walked out of the shop. “What jobs did you do?”

“Some, uh,” Bucky let out a deep breath, “you heard of the Avengers?”

“Got sent to kill them. They attacked a base.”

“I worked for them.”

“Oh.”

“The guy who’s coming for dinner works for them as well.”

“What does he do?”

“Makes tech.”

“Any good?”

“He’s alright.” Bucky paused. “Don’t tell him I said that.”

Steve grinned. “I won’t.”

There was a twinkle in his eye that Bucky didn’t trust in the slightest.

-

About ten minutes before Pepper and Tony were due to arrive, Natasha— who was wearing a long red dress— looked up from the recipe she was following and gave the air a thoughtful look. “Should we have told Tony and Pepper that they’re having dinner with the original Captain America?”

“Yeah.” Bucky decided.

“Should we also have told them to maybe not mention that Tony’s Iron Man?”

The doorbell rang.

“Too late now.” Bucky said. “I’ll get the door.”

There was the sound of the front door opening. “Hi, you must be Tony and Pepper. I’m Steve Rogers, nice to meet you.”

Bucky and Natasha rushed into the hallway, where Steve was taking Peggy’s coat.

“Buckaroo!” Tony beamed and pulled Bucky into a hug. “I see you haven’t replaced the tower with a completely revolting home.”

“Thank you for your lack of faith in our interior decoration skills.” Natasha drawled and kissed him on the cheek. “Fortunately, we now live with Steve the artist, otherwise the walls would be puce.”

Tony turned to Steve and said, with the utmost sincerity, “Thank you for saving them.”

Steve smiled. “They’re the ones who saved me. Painting the walls was the least I could do.” he offered his arm to Pepper. “Dining room’s through here.”

Pepper smiled and happily took Steve’s arm and they walked away, talking about art.

Tony looked at Natasha and Bucky suspiciously. “Is he flirting with Pepper?” he whispered.

Bucky shook his head. “Nah. He’s just being polite.”

Tony smiled, relieved. “Okay. And is he _the_ Steve Rogers? The one who fell off a train in 1941 and died?"

"He didn't die."

"I can see that. What the hell happened to him?"

"HYDRA got him and turned him into the Winter Soldier." Natasha said.

Tony swore. "How did… You can explain later. I'm guessing you want us to keep our mouths shut?”

“He’s not the Winter Soldier. He’s Steve Rogers and he’s my best friend.” Bucky said, giving Tony his coldest of cold stares. “If you do anything—”

“I won’t.” Tony said calmly. “I won’t do anything other than help you and him. That’s Captain America. _Captain America_. SHIELD would do all kinds of awful things to him; you think I’d turn him over to people who’d do that?" he paused. "And who knows, maybe he might be up for joining the Avengers one day.”

“Don’t try and recruit him.” Bucky warned Tony.

“Why not? If he’s up for doing it, I’m not gonna be the one to stop him!”

Bucky smiled and shook his head. “It’s not the Avengers part, though I doubt he’ll ever want to fight again. He thinks the Tower’s hideous.”

Tony pouted. “Oh, come on.”

-

Steve smiled nearly the whole way through dinner. Tony told him of how much he had meant to his father, Steve told Tony of the flying car Howard had promised the world by now. There was talk of art and inventions and history and food.

Natasha was gleeful, eyes bright as she and Pepper compared thoughts on socialism and communism; Bucky added his two cents and then asked about the robots that had driven Pepper’s books to flee for safety.

There was something about the way Tony and Pepper looked at each other. Something that reminded Steve of memories he didn’t remember having.

He smiled. He said goodbye to Tony and Pepper, goodnight to Natasha and Bucky.

He lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, then rolled onto his front and curled into a ball. He stared at the sheet, resting his forehead against it. He swallowed, took a deep breath and tried to remember why he’d recognised Natasha when she first came to the apartment.

_“They will only punish us.”_

_“Kick it harder.”_

_“Hand me the keys.”_

_“Have you got a knife in your boot?”_

_Withering look._

_Electronic pulse._

_Snapped heel, red stiletto, files inside written on brown paper, the same colours as his blood on her newly brown hair._

_Portuguese and Swedish and semaphore._

_Taste of gunpowder._

_Ash._

_His blood._

_Her blood._

_Poison._

_Wine._

Steve thought of Natasha and everything she had done for him; her fingers laced with Bucky’s under the dining table.

Then the other memories started kicking and shoving for space.

-

He remembered where he’d seen the way Bucky looked at Natasha.

He remembered where he’d seen the way Natasha looked at Bucky.

He got out of bed and walked silently up the stairs to the room. He knocked on the door.

It was dark; he wished he’d put a hoodie on; he was crying.

Natasha opened the door, pyjama bottoms and tank top and straight hair over her shoulders. Bucky was sat on the bed, shoulders illuminated by a single lamp. All the blood drained out of his face when he saw Steve.

“I loved you.” Steve said, voice breaking. “Didn’t I? And you both loved me.”

Bucky swore and rested his head on his knees.

“I think we both still love you.” Natasha’s voice was pinched, like she was holding tears at bay at the back of her mouth.

Steve made a broken noise and ran back to his bed.

-

Bucky slid under Steve’s duvet somewhere around three. He was shaking.

Steve rolled over and wrapped his arms around him; Bucky’s head slotted under his chin.

Of all the things Bucky could have said, he told Steve he was scared.

Steve swallowed. “Are you scared of me?”

“No” Bucky whispered. “Never.”

“Then what are you scared of?”

“I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to make you feel like you have to do anything you don’t want to do, I don’t-” Bucky stopped himself with a frustrated sigh. “You thought I was your handler. Do you still think that?”

“I know you’re Bucky.” Steve said, placing each word firmly. “I know you’re my best friend and always have been. I know I love you. I always have. You were my handler. Not under HYDRA. But I came here and you were- you were my handler. To me. I would have done anything you asked of me. Except one. I could have put anything to my wrists or my neck or my head and I would have done whatever you asked me to do with it. I would have done it to anyone else. But I couldn’t have done it to you.

“You’re not my handler anymore. You weren’t after week one. I know it may have seemed to you like that was how I saw you for a long time after that but you weren’t. Not really. If I told myself you were my handler it made everything easier to deal with. It was easier to trust that I had someone else’s tune to jump to rather than having to try and make up my own. It was easier to pretend that I still- not that I _belonged_ to someone but that I was owned by them and that probably sounds like the same thing, but to me it’s completely different. I have _always_ belonged to you, because I chose that. You need me to jump and I’ll jump again and again and again and hell, I’d jump in a bunny rabbit costume with ears and all for you, Buck.”

“You’d be the world’s biggest bunny rabbit.”

“Oh, come on.” Steve’s words were exasperated but his voice- and his smile- said otherwise. “I’m over here, tryna be all deep and tell you all this important stuff and I’m kinda tryna be romantic about it coz it’s not every night I have such a gorgeous boy in my bed-”

Bucky preened.

Steve gave a sigh. It was resigned but _smiling_ and Bucky knew that if the sun was up he’d be able to see the shine in Steve’s eyes and the quirk of the corner of his mouth and the sappy Golden Retriever look on his face that made Bucky fall in love with him every time he saw it. Steve sighed like a dead man scared of living and a live man scared of dying and starlight- not starlight like Tasha was, pitch black nights covered in pinpricks of white light with pine forests and crunching snow underfoot the only sound- but starlight like the last star at dawn clinging on at the brim of the horizon, shining amongst pink and orange, the kind of starlight that wakes first and sleeps last, the kind that promises-

Steve kissed him in the dark and the last of the clean-sheet cold.

There was no need for speeches of trust and ‘you’re not my handler, you’re my _Bucky_ ’ and ‘I would give Nat everything’ and ‘I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t want you as you and for you to want me as me’; not when they could tangle flesh and science-magic fingers with metal and science-magic ones. Not when they could fall asleep. Not when they were back where they belonged, finally.

-

“Alpine’s not as warm as Bucky is.” Natasha announced in the doorway, then climbed in the middle, one boy on each side.

-

The next morning, they found Alpine very happily sprawled over as much of Bucky and Natasha’s bed as she could manage. She looked up at them with distaste.

“I don’t think we’re getting our bed back.” Bucky said.

“I refuse to be defeated by a cat.” Natasha responded. “Alpine, do you want some tuna?”

“Isn’t tuna bad for cats?” Steve muttered in Bucky’s ear. Bucky shrugged.

Natasha tried to lure Alpine off the bed with a tin of tuna but Alpine took no interest in it whatsoever.

“The cat defeated you.” Bucky said.

“I’m gonna pick her up.” Natasha said.

“Natasha, I love you dearly, but is that a good idea?” Bucky asked, running a hand through his hair.

Natasha ignored him and picked Alpine up, much to her disgust. Alpine started fidgeting and clawing at Natasha, who pulled a face. Steve took Alpine out of Natasha’s arms and set her on the floor, where she glared at them all and then stalked off.

“I won.” Natasha grinned.

Steve coughed into his fist.

“ _You_ won.” Natasha corrected herself, then stood on tiptoe and kissed him.

Steve stared at her in shock, jaw hanging. “That was…”

“I can do it better.” Bucky said, then stepped forward to hold Steve’s face and kiss him.

Steve looked back and forth between them with eyes flooding with tears, fingers clenching and unclenching. “I missed that,” he told them, voice high and trembling. “I really missed that.”

-

They kissed each other all the time. Lightly, quickly, never asking for much. Cheek or lips or forehead or neck, because Natasha was shorter than Steve and Bucky and it was easier to reach than their faces.

Alpine was thoroughly put out by the new developments. Steve, who was her favourite, now often had Natasha curled up on his lap or Bucky tucked into his side, of some other version of those arrangements. She did, however, now have access to an entire bed that she got to herself while Bucky and Natasha stayed with Steve.

“Did we-” Steve began hesitantly one night, then stopped abruptly. Bucky was scrubbing at a particularly irritating grease stain on a frying pan while Natasha sharpened her knives on the dining table. Steve had an old Portuguese book in his hands but he hadn’t turned a page for several minutes.

“Did we what?” Natasha asked.

Steve stared at the table. “I did more than just kissing with each of you, didn’t I?” he shook his head to clear it. “No, don’t answer that. I know we did. Do- do you two…”

Bucky shook his head. “I think sex is weird and gross. I don’t like it; I didn’t mind it too bad then coz I thought I had to like it but I don’t want to do it again.”

“I don’t dislike sex but even though I don’t really enjoy it, I don’t mind having it if it makes my partner feel good.” Natasha put her knife down. “Why? Do you want to have sex?”

“Not if you don’t want to.” Steve said hastily. “I do, but if neither of you want to then I’ll be fine by myself, I-”

Natasha cut him off by kissing him. “Lapushka, if you want to, I will. It’s okay to want closer contact.”

“But you-”

“If it makes you happy, it makes me happy. I just don’t get off on it.”

Steve looked at Bucky anxiously.

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. I’ll put some music on.”

Steve turned back to Natasha. “Can- can we? If you-”

Natasha tugged him out of the room. Bucky turned on the old stereo Stark had given him as a joke and returned to the washing up, humming peacefully to himself.

Within two minutes a very unimpressed Alpine came and joined him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings:  
> Mentions of dead bodies and blood.  
> Steve tells Bucky implicitly that he would have killed anyone and committed suicide if Bucky had told him to.  
> Mentions of HYDRA owning Steve.


	7. Organisms in the sea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No chapter warnings. One more chapter after this!

“Dragons.” Steve tucked his head under Bucky’s chin and held him close. “I want you to put dragons in it.”

“Good dragons or bad dragons?”

“Good dragons.”

“And a princess.”

“Okay princess, why don’t you write this story yourself?” Bucky suggested, rolling his eyes at the mischievous look Steve was giving him. “You seem to have more ideas for it than I do.”

Natasha walked into the kitchen wearing a koala onesie and holding a bowl of rice noodles up to her mouth. “Come and sit in the library with me. And put some other clothes on.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re covered in mud and I don’t want to cuddle you if you’re going to get my pyjamas dirty.” Natasha took a step closer and frowned. “Why are you covered in mud?”

“We went running with Sam and he found a really muddy bit.” Steve said, detaching himself from Bucky.

“Why didn’t you invite me?” Natasha pouted. “I like getting muddy.”

“Because you get fed up of running and start doing cartwheels instead and then you and Sam end up in some sort of competition and you always win-”

“That’s not a bad thing!”

“-and then you have a Mario Kart tournament to settle it and then you break the TV and Stark’s refusing to fix it for us for free anymore.” Bucky said.

“I’m sure his apprentice would fix the TV for us!” Natasha called after Steve and Bucky as they headed upstairs.

“That’s not the point!”

-

Once Steve and Bucky were clean enough to be granted permission to the library, they piled up on the enormous green armchair Steve and Natasha had tugged out of a skip and then patched back together. Natasha read a Russian children’s book out loud to Bucky while Steve made his way through a book about a witch. Alpine came to join them and sprawled herself half over Steve’s shoulder and half over Natasha’s head.

Natasha took a pause from reading. “Alpine, why are you licking my hair?”

Bucky giggled and scratched Alpine behind the ear. “She thinks you need a wash.”

“Bucky needs a wash.” Natasha declared. She pulled Alpine off her head and placed her on Bucky’s lap.

“I’ve already had a wash.” Bucky told Alpine, who curled up and began to purr as metal fingers ran tightly along her back.

“You two are- are girlfriend and boyfriend, right?” Steve asked suddenly.

Natasha nodded. “And you’re our boyfriend. Goes each way.”

“What was the equivalent of that when we were kids?” Steve asked Bucky.

Bucky thought for a moment. “Going steady.”

“Except that going steady with two people at the same time was not acceptable in the slightest. It’s still not that normal now, is it?”

“Not really. But neither is having a metal arm or being a superhuman or working for the Avengers. Or being able to buy a house before the age of thirty-five.” Natasha listed. “Or coming back from the depths of the Arctic ocean.” she gave Bucky a pointed look.

“We never did normal, did we?” Steve said to Bucky.

Bucky laughed. “No. I don’t think we ever did.”

-

For Natasha’s birthday-

Birthdays were a big deal to Natasha.

Well,  _ her _ birthday was. She had only found out what day it was on a few years ago, while going through old information from the Red Room. Before that she had just held her birthday whenever she felt like it and bought herself a cake or a book or a pair of boots. Now she had a set date that didn’t change, she planned out her activities and presents and meals months in advance in the same way small children tended to. The year before the first birthday with Steve, Bucky and Clint had planned a surprise part for her at the Tower with all the Avengers and Natasha’s friends. They had drunk and danced and upon Natasha’s command, played Truth or Dare. She had loved it and as tempted as Bucky was to throw her another party, he knew Steve would find it overwhelming, so that was out. The focus, Bucky felt, was going to have to be on his present, so he- that’ll come later.

For Natasha’s birthday, they went on their first date.

“It’s. So. Cold.” Bucky shivered, teeth chattering as he stood at the top of the beach and watched Natasha jump out of the way of the surf, shrieking with glee as the waves splashed over her feet.

“It’s the West Coast of the Atlantic in New York in February.” Steve said pointedly. His jacket made him look even bigger than he already was and despite making him even more attractive, it also made Bucky feel very small. “What did you expect?”

Natasha turned around to face them. “Come in with me!”

Bucky shook his head emphatically. “No. It’s  _ bloody _ cold. And I don’t want hypothermia.”

“You won’t get hypothermia!” Natasha said cheerily.

“I’m not Russian! I will!”

Natasha laughed and returned to jumping in and out of the water.

Steve and Bucky watched her in silence and perhaps awe.

The wind picked up and the waves began to get higher, crashing against rocks and throwing sea spray over them. Natasha ran up the shingle, smiling from ear to ear and eyes bright. She kissed them, tasting of sea salt and mist. “Best birthday ever.”

“You organised it all.” Bucky reminded her. She linked her arms though each of their and they headed back to the car.

“You still agreed to come even though it’s cold.” Natasha pointed out. “Wouldn’t be as much fun without you two.”

“Even though we just stood at the top of the beach and did nothing?” Steve opened the car door for her and she climbed into the back.

“Everything’s more fun when you’re with me.” Natasha hooked her chin over the back of the passenger seat and exchanged kisses with Steve. Bucky dried his hair with a towel. “Now we’re going to a supermarket so I can buy cake ingredients and then we’re going home so you two can give me my present and then you’re making me a cake and then we’re going to the cinema. Three dates in one day, I want you to beat that record next year Barnes.”

He saluted her in the wing mirror and waited for seatbelts to click into place before driving away.

“Why does going to the supermarket count as a date?” Steve asked Natasha.

“Coz it’s my birthday and I’m in charge.” Natasha smirked. “Which also gives me the power over what we listen to.”

Steve and Bucky groaned in unison.

“Shakira.”

-

There was a dog.

In the supermarket.

It took Steve a few moments to process. “Bucky? What’s a service dog?” Natasha was examining ice cream with the kind of focus that dared not be interrupted. “It’s a dog that helps someone with something. Like, if they can’t see or hear or if they’ve got PTSD.”

“Cool.”

“Boys, we have an issue.” Natasha called over.

“What?”

“I don’t know which ice cream to get.” she held up two tubs.

“Tasha,” Steve said gently. “It’s your birthday. Get both.”

Bucky cleared his throat. “Steve?”

Steve turned to look where Bucky was pointing. “Ah.”

There were already four tubs of ice cream in the trolley. Natasha thought it was hilarious.

-

Alpine got lonely that night and decided to move into their bed. She settled on top of Natasha’s stomach.

“We need a bigger bed.” Natasha said.

“Would now be a good time to suggest we get a dog?”


	8. When night sees sunrise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter! See end notes for chapter warnings. I hope you've enjoyed this; thank you for all the lovely comments!

For Natasha’s birthday, Bucky had given her a scarf he’d knitted himself- pink and blue stripes, knit one, purl one; many hours of hard, frustrating work- and Steve had painted her sitting on a throne with a crown. The painting was hung above their bed, the scarf on the coat hooks. It was soon joined by a dog lead- dark blue leather, gold studs, the one they used for going places. The retractable lead for walks sat on top of the basket by the shelves of shoes.

“Give me the rope.” Steve said firmly. “Give me the rope.”

Bryl was not interested in handing her rope over. Or, rather, opening her mouth and dropping the filthy, mangled, slobbery toy onto Steve’s lap, so her refusal was probably for the best.

“Can I have it?” Natasha called, sliding off the sofa onto the floor and happily abandoning the book of accounts she insisted on keeping.

Wagging her golden tail- which was absolutely the same colour as Steve’s hair no matter how much he tried to deny it- Bucky walked over to Natasha and gave her the rope. “Good girl! Good girl! Am I your favourite?” Natasha scratched behind Bryl’s ears and grinned at Steve over the top of Bryl’s head. “I’m her favourite.”

Steve ignored this and reached into his pocket, wriggling slightly so he could get his hand in. “Bryl? You want a treat?”

Bryl bounded away from Natasha to lick the treat out of Steve’s hand. “Who’s the favourite now?”

“You will be if you come and draw this sea-werewolf for me.” Bucky told Steve, who scrambled up next to him and looked at the notebook Bucky was writing in.

“What bit is it that you want me to-”

Bucky tapped a finger on the page and Steve took the pen out of Bucky’s hand and started doodling in a corner.

“Why have you got a sea-werewolf in your story?” Natasha asked, stroking Alpine who had settled on her lap and was sending a look of jealousy in the direction of Bucky’s toy.

“Clint asked me to put one in.” Bucky said. “Says his kids want it but I don’t believe him.”

“What even is a sea-werewolf?” Natasha asked.

“No idea. That’s why Steve’s drawing it for me.”

“You’re supposed to be the imagination here, not me.” Steve grumbled and gave Bucky back the notebook. “That look alright?”

“Perfect.” Bucky began to write again and Steve rested his head on his side.

“If Bucky gets to write the sea-werewolf and Steve gets to draw it, can I name it?” Natasha said. “Lulu. Call it Lulu-Belle.”

And thus, the sea-werewolf was christened.

-

Bucky stood in the doorway for a while when he saw Steve and Natasha on the sofa. They were lying with Natasha’s front to Steve’s back and her back to the back of the sofa. She had her arms wrapped around his stomach and her forehead leaning on his shoulder, eyes shut. Steve was paying the smallest amount of attention to the TV, hands resting on top of Natasha’s. Alpine lay sprawled across the top of the sofa; Bryl was snoring happily in the cat basket. (Don’t ask.)

Bucky felt his cheeks warm up with just how much he loved them.

“Come and sit down.” Natasha called, patting the empty edge of the sofa.

“Babe, if you think I’m small enough to fit on there, you’ve got another thing coming.” Bucky drawled. “I’m not the cat.”

As if to emphasis his point, Alpine mewed and jumped off the back of the sofa to jump onto the only space left.

“Clearly not.” Steve said dryly.

Bucky sat on the floor and leaned back against the sofa, head near Steve’s. A hand began to run through his hair; Natasha.

This was heaven, Bucky decided. The floor wasn’t much more comfortable than the bed he’d woken up in but the noise from the TV had depth the radio hadn’t and he knew exactly where he was- with two people he loved very much in the living room of their house, with his three legged cat and Steve’s service dog- Golden Retriever, what else was Captain America supposed to have?

He could fall asleep to the feeling of Natasha’s fingers in his hair. Natasha, the most beautiful woman he’d met- not that he really cared about that. She was stubborn, they all were and yet somehow they balanced each other out perfectly; brave, so very brave; clever and giggly and knitter and she was the moon to Steve’s sun. Bucky wondered what that made him, but not for long. He was dusk and dawn.

He’d expected to see Steve die since he was thirteen years old. He’d expected Steve to die on a bad day when breath wouldn’t catch, fevers wouldn’t crash and infections wouldn’t snap. Bad days were different now.

They’d had one today; Steve had two panic attacks at breakfast over the sound of the neighbour’s car backfiring. He was still half asleep when he heard it, normally able to distinguish memory from reality, but normally took place in sunlight when he knew whether he was dreaming or not. But the larger picture couldn’t be ignored- Steve was finding life easier. And in the even bigger picture, it was a miracle he was alive at all.

It was a miracle that any of them were alive, that they’d made it to second, third, fourth lives. (Bucky wasn’t quite sure just how much Natasha had lived or done. He’s not sure if she knows either, but it doesn’t bother her, so there was peace over it.)

It was a miracle Bucky was grateful for with every breath he took, with every breath he’d ever taken; this becoming, this second becoming that had been what his entire existence had led up to.

Steve’s hand joined Natasha’s in Bucky’s hair.

“Love you.” Bucky whispered.

“Love you too.” Steve and Natasha whispered in both unison and Russian.

“Shall we have pancakes for breakfast tomorrow?” Bucky yawned.

“Yeah.”

Bucky fell asleep with a free heart and a joyous soul. Steve and Natasha slept in the same way.

THE END.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings:  
> Mention of panic attacks  
> Mention of past illnesses

**Author's Note:**

> Suspected character death (but no actual death)  
> Mentions of illness  
> Mentions of last rites  
> Mention of sex  
> Reference to porn  
> Mention of a plane crash
> 
> Let me know if I missed anything!
> 
> Come say hi on tumblr! silvermyfanwy


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